Barbara La Marr

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Silent-film actress and screenwriter Barbara La Marr once said, "I take lovers like roses . . . by the dozen."

And she was hardly exaggerating: By age 19 she had been married three times, divorced and widowed. In her 20s, she married twice more. Still, she found time to become a world-famous actress, only to die at 29 a few months after collapsing on a movie set.

La Marr was one of those silent-film stars who disappeared from the world's consciousness almost as swiftly as she entered it, dying the year before the first "talkie" appeared.

During her brief career, she danced with Hollywood's greatest romantic idols, including Rudolph Valentino and Ramon Novarro, and starred with Douglas Fairbanks Sr. Even before she appeared in front of the cameras, La Marr wrote film scenarios and screenplays, according to newspaper accounts of the time.

Once she appeared on screen, she sizzled as a sexy vamp. According to her son, Don Gallery, La Marr lived with abandon, keeping a container of cocaine on her piano and binging on heroin and highballs. Friends and family members said she became hooked on drugs after being given painkillers for an injury.

Official accounts of her death in 1926 at her Altadena home on Boston Street list the cause as tuberculosis and nephritis — inflammation of the kidney.

She may have been the only screenwriter to persuade a dictator to appear in a film: Benito Mussolini played himself in the now-vanished 1923 film "The Eternal City," which La Marr starred in and for which she was reported to have done uncredited writing and producing.

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Four thoughts about Barbara La Marr

“

yes she does dont ever forget her

”— vivesca, January 28, 2011 at 11:39 a.m.
“

Infamous...but she should also be remembered as one of the first women to find success as a screenwriter before she became an actress, and one of the first Southern Californians to succeed in the film industry

”— Joel Rane, June 4, 2014 at 12:03 a.m.
“

Barbara partied like there was no tomorrow bragging that She didn't waste more than two hours a night on sleep. She burned the candle at both ends and it must have been a really short candle because She never made it to Her 30th birthday.There's a party going on in the great beyond and Barbara is in the middle of it having a really great time.

”— steve, March 26, 2015 at 9:36 p.m.
“

Barbara loved to party like there was no tomorrow. She used to brag that She didn't waste more than two hours a night on sleep believing She had more important things to do. She burned the candle at both ends and I have to believe it was a very short candle. The party came to an end in 1926 when She died.She never made it to Her 30th birthday. There's a party going on up there in the sky and Barbara is in the middle of it having a really good time.

”— steve, March 28, 2015 at 6:56 p.m.

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